Reflections are Protections
by Electronic Cow
Summary: I am terrible at these tiny summaries. Based off one of the many theories surrounding FFVIII's storyline. I'm not saying which yet. If you figure it out; great. Pairing is listed as 'Zell/Seifer' also features Rinoa/Squall, dual focus. Sporadic updates.


**H**i, this is my first attempt at Fanfiction in a long time. I wrote fanfiction long ago but got out of the genre. Got into roleplay instead. I've decided to get back into this though and figured; why not start a big project or two? Randomly decided to try my hand at a FFVIII story I've had brewing in my head for awhile. This first chapter is actually an opener / _prologue_ of sorts to the work, based on a later chapter and events I have developed. So the next chapter will open in a much different style and setting. As for pairings; I have the story listed as Seifer / Zell, because that is a major focus of the story and my favorite pairing for this series, but it will also feature Squall / Rinoa due to the plot. So please refrain from any style of shipping war in the reviews; thanks! Hope you enjoy!

Yes; the title is inspired by a La Roux song. Title is prone to change. Random pick for now.

If you read it; review it please ~ 3

- **Electronic Cow**

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><p><strong>PROLOGUE <strong>- Dream A Dream

"_This is all wrong and you can't deny it anymore_."

The voice came disembodied, echoing down halls that seemed to be made of static.

His boots crunched the glass of Trabia Garden's third floor class hallway. Selphie had brought them there once. It had been their first visit after the missiles hit the northernmost Garden. Despite the tears in her eyes she told them stories of each class they passed; how her magic teacher had been a pervert, how an explosion had happened here or there, about the one time a bite bug got loose in the facility and they had to track it down. At the time Squall had walked a bit behind the group, arms folded over his chest, and feigned interest in the view beyond shattered floor to ceiling windows. No one expected any different at the time. They knew he was listening and they were right; he had been. Every word out of his friend's mouth had been committed to Squall's near recorder memory.

At least until now where one by one, in brief flashes, they seemed to vanish. He crossed his arms and his friends were ahead of him, chatting away, reliving memories that seemed to be leaving him. Zell looked back at him and gave the 'Come on Squall!' wave. Rinoa joined in once she noticed what the tattooed blonde doing it. At the time he found it irritating but now the brunette found it made him quirk a small smile.

Then it was gone along with the rest of his memories from Trabia Garden.

Caraway's mansion in Deling City was the same as he remembered it from last time: on fire, filled with smoke, and the faint smell of burning paint littering the entire structure. The prized painting of Rinoa's mother before her death burnt up to his left as he passed, a vase cracked from the heat, and the wallpaper peeled. The flames licked at his boots but Squall's skin did not burn. In his mind he attributed it to Shiva but that was not right. The first time, it had been the ice Guardian Force's will shielding him from the flames. Every inch of his skin had tingled with his frigid protection. This time was different; the GF was not here. There were no calm, quiet whispers from his mind, all was silent, even the fire.

"_Did you want to hurt them? I think you did_."

The voice again. Squall's arms were still crossed over his chest and his feet seemed to carry themselves forward. He had no idea where the speaker was but yet he did. If he just kept moving forward he would eventually reach the young, masculine voice.

Squall would know why it sounded so sad and why he cared it did.

"_You decided that it was wrong didn't you? Just for a moment; you did not want it. Why make it happen in the first place then? Why let it continue after? Did a moment of senseless lashing out make it better? Did you want someone to suffer the same feeling you always have? No; you don't have to answer, I know. It's okay. It doesn't matter."_

"I never wanted this. You can't blame me for a fire." Squall's voice came soft was he pushed open the door to Caraway's study with a bare hand. It should have burned him, seared his flesh, but his skin did not even tingle. The fire was worst in the study. It had started there amongst all the books and liquors of the bar. Everything burned except for a small circle in the center of the room where the loveseat had been. It was gone, blasted to the far wall by the same explosion which turned one of the windows into a giant hole.

In the place of the loveseat was a blonde man with a scarred face crouched on one knee. The edge of his long grey coat appeared burnt black and every inch of visible skin was red from the heat. Especially his face; it was dark red and his eyes were clenched tight, watering even, and Squall could not tell if it was from the intense heat of the flames all around them or because of the unconscious figure the man was clutching. Brighter blonde, at least Squall believed him to be blonde; his hair dyed red by matted blood. Clearly unconscious; his whole body collected in the arms the crouched man. The scarred blonde paid special attention to his charge's muscular legs which were uncovered by the shorts.

And then the scarred blonde man looked up and noticed Squall.

Why did his hopeful look, practically begging, seem so foreign to the brunette?

"_You can't help them._"

Squall shook his head and looked anywhere but at the strange man before him; the one who looked so hopeful, so pleased to see him, his face seemingly frozen in that moment.

"I could; I could put out the fire and-"

"_You are beyond the point where you can help them. They should not matter to you now._"

He, the voice, was right. Squall did not really care. His expression was apathetic as he watched the frozen scene. The flames that never flicked, the wounds that never bled.

The optimistic eyes that never once looked away as he turned and walked out the door.

The mansion was gone and with it the flames. Squall was seated, his head in his hands and a curse on his lips, a panel of controls he did not understand before him. There was a woman in the seat to his right. She was staring at him with her dark eyes veiled by even darker hair, a blue dress slightly damp from the humidity in the air, and a smile for him.

She had so much faith in him and he could tell just from a glan-

"_You're regressing. Remember how things really are. She is not as she appears._"

"I know her, don't I? Where is this, what am I doi-"

Squall stopped talking at an impact. Something had broken. He leaned and looked behind his chair, past the rows of seats, towards the back. Towards the two steel doors which closed and he somehow knew were sealed tight. Something was being kept out. Something that they did not want in the strange cockpit with them. The two blondes from earlier were there and in what was becoming a trend, both were injured. The shorter blonde – whom Squall now noticed had a tattoo on his face – was bouncing from heel to heel while clutching a bleeding shoulder. He dripped some kind of liquid that was far too green to be water. The other blonde, the same one who had looked at him with such hopeful eyes earlier, was in slightly better shape, though the way he clutched his chest somehow told Squall that he was injured, on the inside, something that Dr. Kad. . .

Something that who?

"_It doesn't matter anymore. Stop clinging to those two._"

And as if on command, despite himself, Squall found he did just that. Even as he turned away from the two blondes at the door, all memory of them seemed to just flow away.

It was just him, the raven haired woman who still smiled, and the stars beyond the windo-

"_You've never seen the stars from here._"

It was just dark beyond the windows. Nothing was out there. An abyss.

For a long moment it was just him and the blue dressed woman. She was not moving anymore, not an inch, frozen in a perfect moment of optimism. Squall wanted to lean forward and touch her, at least a brush of the cheek, but stayed in his seat. He kept his hands glued to the edges of the chair and kept his head turned to her. It was awkward. She never blinked and somehow Squall knew he did not have to either.

It seemed to stretch on for hours until finally the voice spoke again.

"_She was never there._"

No, that was wrong. "She was here. With me. We were, she was min-"

"_No. She was never yours. People are not objects. We know this._"

A pause. The girl's image seemed to shimmer and despite his hesitance, Squall put a hand out, two fingers brought together to rub a thin line cut running below her right eye.

His glove was moist at the place where it had touched her skin.

"_We can't make people ours just because we want them._"

Squall ignored it and pulled his fingers back, inspecting them.

"She was crying. Why was sh-"

"_No. She wasn't. She did before, you saw her. This never-_"

"No!" Squall was insistent. He practically yelled. His eyes felt moist. He never cried. This was one thing in all this he was sure of – Squall Leonhart never cried. Not since he was a kid. Not since Ellone had left the orphanage. It felt similar, so much so that he. . .

"_It's not the same._"

And he knew it wasn't because he had no idea who this Ellone was. The name seemed so familiar but it meant nothing. The orphanage meant nothing. The girl who had sat in the chair close by, which was empty, must have meant nothing. He had already lost all of her.

Her name. Her face. Her history. Even the thought of her smile would fade soon.

And they did.

The scenes came fast after that, blurred together and streaked in more static than before.

He sat at the edge of a peer, looking out at the sea, with a strangely dressed brunette with him. The man looked like a cowboy escaped from those movies someone liked. Like Squall himself the strange man sat on the pier, boots dangling above the water, and peered out over the water. The only differences were that he was smoking a thin cigarette, Squall had never smoked, and that this strange was unmoving. Frozen. Even his smoke.

It seemed like an important conversation but the voice assured him it wasn't.

A short, cheerful girl was walking with him, each step a bounce, tiny tufts of duct tape all over her dress for use later. Unlike many other flashes she moved, mostly her mouth, but no sound came out. It was as silent as all the others. Somehow silence with this girl walking beside him felt most foreign of all, he was pleased when the static pressed on.

A blonde woman with glasses sat across the desk from him in an office. The desk between them was bare safe for carefully stacked papers, immaculately ordered. Every wall in the large office was entirely bare of ornamentation. There was nothing to suggest the person over this place had any personality. From his seat behind the grand desk; Squall was not surprised by this, by the emptiness, the absence of personality. Nor was he surprised the blonde woman in her red dress frozen with a look of irritation.

He sighed, "She always looked like that.

Even the voice sounded sad when it replied, "_She did._"

The scenes came faster, the static louder, no one was moving anymore. Even the colors seemed to be washed away. He was on a train, a boat, walking down tracks with a weight on his back and the breeze absolutely nonexistence, walking up the steps of a grand building in a city full of lights that shown with no color. He was in space.

And then he wasn't.

There were no colors, no sound, and no people. Emptiness. Just Squall and the scenery of Deling City with all the decorations for the parade still up. Trash littered the areas that should have been crowded. Fireworks were frozen in the sky, a few not even all the way burst. Behind the young SeeD the thick steel gates dropped during the assassination attempt were still there, firm as ever, keeping out all intrusion though there was none.

And then he was not as alone as he thought.

In the seat of the float, where once a powerful woman had proclaimed her dominance, sat instead a young boy, tall for his age with shaggy dark brown hair and the dark blue eyes.

Those eyes were what most drew Squall's attention. They were the coldest, more stoic of eyes, hooded by the shadows of the kid's bangs and a general sense of displeasure and sadness. Not even his over sized, bright yellow shirt warmed them in the slightest.

He looked familiar but Squall could not place him. He could not place anything anymore.

The kid spoke, "You've accepted it."

Squall felt as if he should have denied it, as if he should have argued. Just opened his mouth and screamed at this brat to explain what was going on and fix it. Yet for some reason; Squall knew he could not do this, and so he did not even try to open his mouth.

"Do not be afraid. It happens to everyone. It will be alright."

Was this kid trying to sooth him? Squall shook his head, resisting, as was his way.

"You do not have to resist. You can't, really. This is the way things must be."

No; no it wasn't. This was not the way. Why could he not speak? His attempts to open his mouth seemed pointless, ineffectual at best. He did not blink, he did not speak, nor breath.

He raised a hand to his face and steadfast ignored the child's soft, "Don't; not yet. . ."

_Nothing_; the moment Squall's hand reached what should have been his nose, his lips, his eyes, he was no longer himself. Instead he sat where the small, brown haired boy had sat looking so sad, and peered out over the parade float. He looked upon the body that had been his moments before, black leather pants and furred jacket, with all the splendor of a frozen Deling City behind him. He looked upon the face of the man Squall Leonhart.

There was nothing there; just a black hole that seemed to draw in everything around it. A black hole framed by dark brown hair that led to an abyss that seemed deeper than space.

And in that moment he understood. He understood why he had lost everything.

Yet he could not find it in himself to care.

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><p><strong>AN ::<strong>

**Ew; editor still likes to decimate line formatting. Sorry for lines randomly ending everywhere. D:**

**Hope you enjoyed this little intro. I was going to start with Chapter 1 as per normal but decided to try this format first.**


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